Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, otherwise known as Irregular at Magic High School, is an Anime made by the infamous Madhouse Studio. Airing the in the Summer of 2014 and with just over 350k people having this Anime on their MAL Lists. I believe it’s safe to say that this Anime sure was well known. It is an Anime that I’ve seen personally (Like all Anime I’ve reviewed thus far) and I thought it was one of the better Anime of 2014. With a Movie already out based on this particular Anime – which typically means a Second Season is incoming.
All that being said, today, we’re going to discuss why I think this Anime deserves a second season.
Episode Count: 26
MyAnimeList Synopsis
“In the dawn of the 21st century, magic, long thought to be folklore and fairy tales, has become a systematized technology and is taught as a technical skill. In First High School, the institution for magicians, students are segregated into two groups based on their entrance exam scores: “Blooms,” those who receive high scores, are assigned to the First Course, while “Weeds” are reserve students assigned to the Second Course.
Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei follows the siblings, Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba, who are enrolled in First High School. Upon taking the exam, the prodigious Miyuki is placed in the First Course, while Tatsuya is relegated to the Second Course. Though his practical test scores and status as a “Weed” show him to be magically inept, he possesses extraordinary technical knowledge, physical combat capabilities, and unique magic techniques—making Tatsuya the irregular at a magical high school.”
Art
The art for one, in my opinion, is one of the best in terms of animation and here’s why. Colour and drawing wise, this Anime is just like every other Anime. The colour scheme works well together, and the drawing of each little detail is really well done. The details they studio wanted you to see were really well detailed and drawn while others that were not really a focal point didn’t stand out as much.
However, I am here to talk about the Animation. Irregular at Magic High School is an Anime who excels when it comes to animating its fight scenes and other scenes that involve the use of spell casting. Each fight scene is carefully choreographed, showing the strengths of the characters in the fight but also their spell casting ability. Each spell is beautifully animated and flows so well, there are not any crappy, out of place, pointless animations to each spell cast. The animating to these spell casts just worked. Similar to that of which you see in Naruto whenever they used a Jutsu and the fight scenes that you see in Irregular is similar to the fight Obito and Kakashi had during the Great Ninja War. Beautifully animated and well executed. Rating: 8.5/10
Soundtrack
Irregular at Magic High School also has two superb intros, the first intro being sung by LiSA and the second one being sung by GARNiDELiA. Both intros are really well made and the animation to go along with the song highlight the Anime and its strengths action.
Since Irregular’s main focus was on the action, that also meant in terms of insert noises within the Anime, there had to be a lot of them. This is due to it being heavy on the action, it needed sounds to fill every spell cast, kick, punch dodge, run, jump, scream etc. With all these moving parts to a 26 episode long Anime, the studio made an amazing job finding sounds and/or songs to fit during different scenes of the Anime.
Finally, the outro. Like the intro are sung by amazing artists in, ELISA and Rei Yasuda. What is noticeable through the two outros are how calm, gentle and soothing they are. Which I think is a major plus to the Anime because after a whole 23 minutes of action and drama you need something to calm the mood down. This is something both outros do really well at. Rating: 8.5/10
Character Design
In the Anime, there is a multitude of characters all with differing personalities, all with different complexes too (The two siblings have a brother and sister complex together, but they show it in different ways). However since there are many personalities, in a span of 26 episodes all of which is 23 minutes long, I think it becomes a little bit overwhelming. I think it’s overwhelming because it makes it hard to keep up with each character and their different personalities and tendencies all just at times, becomes a big jumbled mess.
There is also one huge and massive flaw, the main character, Tatsuya, is extremely overpowered – he is basically God. You find out that he is essentially a superhuman and is immortal because he can bring himself back from the dead due to his ability in the realm of spell casting to restore whatever he wants to the state it was 24 hours prior to the injury or death. This is evident in a fight scene because you see Tatsuya reviving his fallen comrades in the battle. On top of that you find out that due to his immense strength and abilities, his family had his sister be the only key to unlock Tatsuya from the chains that hold his power down.
As you watch this Anime, you see how extremely powerful Tatsuya is, he is comparable to a Naruto. Tatsuya throughout the whole Anime is operating at 25% power, which is really hard to believe. Then his sister removes the chains holding his power back then you find out that his sister only allowed up to achieve 50% power (At this point he is able to revive everyone who is dead and turn a whole city coastline into a massive crater). God knows what happens when he reaches 100%. Rating 7/10
Story
Is there a real story to this? Yeah, I think so. What I thought the story was Tatsuya trying to return to a normal life and the journey he goes through at the school. However, problems arrive when the school attends a nationwide school tournament when there are ‘terrorists’ that threaten to shut down the tournament and it’s up to Tatsuya to stop them before it’s too late. This storyline extends into the second half of the Anime too. However, that is pretty much it. I cannot say much about it really, it does, however, inherit a harem as Tatsuya manages to get all the girls to like him in some capacity. Woo for harems! Rating: 6.5/10
Does this Anime deserve at second Season?
Yes, I do think it does. I have read all the light novels to Irregular at Magic High School. What I thought was really interesting was that all the arcs in the first season all just feed into one another and eventually it unveils this beautiful and complex story underneath. What I thought was absolutely amazing.
It expands into something really interesting, I personally think it is one of the better laid out story lines an Anime could possibly have because it goes really deep. It turns this Anime which kind of turns into a harem, into something completely removing the harem and focusing on a clan war. Which is something I think would be really cool to see if animated. I hope it does get a second season, I would love to watch it!
Stamp of Approval Earned,
– OOCentral.
